


Equus Caballus

by handyhunter



Category: Astonishing X-Men, X-Men (comicsverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-19
Updated: 2010-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handyhunter/pseuds/handyhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither Brand nor Scott is good at small talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equus Caballus

"Equus caballus," Brand said, after a lengthy silence.

"What?" Scott followed her gaze. "Oh, yeah. They belong to our neighbours." The few grazing horses were tiny brown and grey dots against the green fields; they didn't come near their fence-line anymore, not after the Sentinels, Magneto, Logan and everything else over the years.

"Xavier used to keep horses," he offered, in order to keep the conversation going. This was in no way how he'd planned to spend a quiet afternoon. They didn't have many of those lately. And then Brand dropped quite literally out of the sky - probably spooking the horses during her descent, though they seemed fine now - and Scott didn't quite know what to do with her. He'd invited her in to the school but she wanted to stay outside. It was too nice a day to pick a fight with her or to hurry along whatever news she must have brought with her -- or why else would she be here... Oh. Well, he didn't suppose Hank would appreciate him asking her what her intentions were for him--Hank, that was, not Scott.

Brand nodded. "They had certain military applications. Do you ride?"

"No." Scott understood motorcycles, which horses very much were not, something he'd found out after an impromptu dismount, and that was the end of that attempt at "broadening his horizons," to use the professor's words. "Warren - an old team-mate - his parents used to make him take riding lessons. Jean, too. I mean, she wanted to ride. Her parents didn't make her, I don't think." And when Warren finally was allowed to quit, somehow all his riding clothes - and they were expensive, Scott was sure - turned into styles for girls and ended up in Jean's closet. Warren could be scarily generous like that, at times. Scott let his mind wander, remembering their first few years at this place, as he and Brand stood on the back porch in a silence that was, if not companionable, then at least not so filled with tension.

A familiar, rumbling baritone drifted through the open windows to the tune of "Everyday I Have the Blues," and Brand nodded at Scott, and then back at the horses. "They're good for eating too," she said, before stepping through the door. Scott was almost certain she was teasing, maybe.


End file.
